"Helga" Matt's 65 bus restoration thread - Austin TX!

[Longboardluv]

[Pinetops]

Cool, I bet it will turn out great. That color looks like a pretty good match.

FWIW When I blended new paint on my bus, I found that fine scotch brite pads did the best job of convincingly "aging" the new paint.
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"A rolling bus gathers no rust."

[Longboardluv]

[Longboardluv]

the door I bought off Facebook came in!

while putting it on i noticed the Wolfsburg Crest on the hinge, pretty neat!

i'm happy and now I can sell the blue one for what I paid for the SWR one

then i hit the V with some grey scotch brite and taped it off

and painted!

I'll give it a couple of days to dry and then wet sand it with 2000 grit! It should take a bunch of the shine off and get it a little more milky red. So still more work to do!

[Longboardluv]

sanding with 2000 grit and grey scotch brite

primer on a towel seemed to make a good "thru to the primer" look

as shown here

i'm not going to matte clear coat it for a while. i need the red to bleach a little more and i have a few ideas on how to do it!

[Longboardluv]

got the lights and emblem back on! The top clip of the emblem is tricky. Had to get my wife to get her little hand in there behind the tray to put it on! Hopefully the bumpers will be coming soon!

[zozo]

Damn!! That looks really, really good. Congrats.

[67Cabrio]

Looks fantastic! Thanks for all the details on how you did it; hope to be doing the same thing to our bus next summer. (Same colors, too)

[vwuberalles]

wow nice work!! once that red fades in the sun a little bit it'll be spot on!
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1973 Superbeetle: 1st car, owned since age 12. Update thread --> https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9919140#9919140
1967 Kombi: Owned since age 17, Dad's retirement project.
1966 Beetle: My new project. (SOLD) Build thread--> https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=678040

[Longboardluv]

I went ahead and took a little time to paint the side as well.
Unfortunately, the pictures make it look darker than it is, but I should be able to get it to be a closer match.

I also started work on cleaning up this repair job. it had gobs of bondo that i'm sanding down and fixing in order to paint along with the rocker on this side.

[Longboardluv]

I got the body work almost done and ready for paint. I had to have another can of red made at Gemstone Auto. This spot will need one more light sanding then i'll paint it.

I also finally removed this WW tag from the rocker under the cargo doors. I'll be painting this section too, but I kind of liked having that tag down there..

[conrad1468]

Awesome job!!
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[DubStyle]

What a great build thread. Thanks for posting the voltage drop from Amazon. I need one for my bus and this just reminded me to buy one.
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[Longboardluv]

Thanks everyone!

here's a little preview of something that is coming along!...

[Longboardluv]

after a quick sand and a little more taping..

I was able to get three coats!

It's pretty close! I'll have to do some blending/fading along where the two colors meet but it is way better than it was!

[Longboardluv]

got the bumpers back from paint!

the front went together pretty easy, installing it took a few tries. Had to put it in and make adjustments. Took about two hours for the front

bam!

so my rear bumper is a euro style with no holes for uprights or towel bars. I ended up drilling the wrong hole. You can see here that it actually uses the outside hole on both sides to hold both the bracket and upright

so now I have a hole and some chips where i tried the first time. I think i can repair the chips pretty easy, and i have a vintage stop light that i was planning on installing anyways, so i'll just use this hole for the wire and mount it there. no worries #movingon

also found out that i had to drill out the threads for each of those so the 70mm bolt would fit through it. thanks to the samba for this info.

towel bar fitment

trace and drill for mounting hardware

rear all together! I'll try to install it along with the mudflaps tomorrow!

[Longboardluv]

so now i'm running into the issue of the bumper hitting the exhaust. So i need to figure out if I need to change something, cut the bumper or figure out if I'm just doing this wrong.

[zozo]

I'd say modify the exhaust, rather than cut the bumper.

[EverettB]

[silkvw]

Those bumpers look great, Matt!
I know I would not want to cut them either.
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'64 single cab Big Bend Bus Bash 2015 '16
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